Stanford football: Icing the kicker

Sometimes the games that football coaches try to play with opposing placekickers’ heads gets a little tedious. I’m thinking specifically of the trend in recent years to call a timeout just before the snap on a field goal try.

The whole idea strikes me as dirty pool, like a defensive player trying to induce an offensive player to false-start, which is illegal. I think college football should prohibit timeouts on placekicks once 10 or 15 seconds have elapsed on the play clock.

Sometimes the strategy works, or at least seems to. Stanford coach David Shaw did it to Duke’s Jeffrey Ijjas just before a 49-yard try at the end of the first half a couple of weeks ago. Ijjas missed the kick that didn’t count, then missed the kick that did count. So maybe it didn’t matter.

I asked Stanford kicker Jordan Williamson about whether a late-icing-whistle is apt to affect a kicker. “Honestly, I don’t think it makes a big difference,’’ he said. “I feel like it helps sometimes because you get a practice kick in the same conditions. If something happens on that kick, you know how to adjust. It’s not that big a deal.’’

Against Arizona, Williamson was about to attempt a 20-yard field goal from the left hash-mark. Stanford took an intentional delay-of-game penalty to try to get him a better angle, but Arizona declined. Williamson made the kick. Does the angle on a short kick make much of a difference to him? “Not really,’’ he said.